KL Rahul has started his England tour with a century, he scored a century in the match against England Lions, which helped Team India scored 319 runs for seven wickets in the rain-affected match on the first day of the second unofficial Test.
Rahul strengthened his preparations by scoring a century before the five-match Test series against England starting on June 20. He adopted a defensive attitude at the beginning of his innings and completed his half-century in 102 balls. After this, he accelerated his batting and completed his century in the next 49 balls. Rahul completed his century in 151 deliveries by stealing a run after hitting a four off Chris Woakes’ ball.
He focused on keeping the ball close to his body in fast bowler-friendly conditions amid cloud cover and was not in a hurry to hit shots. Rahul coped with the challenge of a superb bowling attack from Chris Woakes to make 116 off 168 balls with the help of 15 fours and a six besides sharing 87 runs for the third wicket with Karun Nair (40) and 121 runs for the fourth wicket with wicketkeeper Dhruv Jurel (52) to help the team recover from a poor start.
KL Rahul got a good support from Jurel, who completed his half-century in 66 balls with a four against George Hill. This is Jurel’s third consecutive half-century on this tour. He had scored 94 and 53 not out in the first unofficial Test. Both Rahul and Jurel were dismissed by George Hill within three balls. After bowling out Jurel in the 60th over of the innings, Hill got Rahul caught out in his next over
Yashasvi Jaiswal (17) and Abhimanyu Easwaran (11) were dismissed in the opening session. However, the Indian batters capitalized on a favorable pitch during an extended second session, which was lengthened to make up for overs lost to rain earlier in the day. India lost just one wicket in that period, Karun Nair, who got leg before by Chris Woakes after a solid 40 off 71 balls. Despite getting good starts, Nitish Kumar Reddy (34) and Shardul Thakur (19) couldn’t convert them into big scores in the rain-affected session.
England’s all-rounder Chris Woakes led the bowling attack with three wickets, while George Hill claimed two and Farhan Ahmed picked up one. At stumps, Tanush Kotian remained unbeaten on 5, with Anshul Kamboj at the other end on 1.
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